Thursday 27 November 2014

Reinvent, rethink, innovate & create your brand with Affiliate Marketing

A well planned and right benchmarked marketing strategy is what every company desires...to tap on its right end customer base & hence scale up its economy of scales and the revenue. In this era of metropolitan lifestyle with the advent of the internet & social media’s huge presence, the corporate have to rethink on their marketing strategy and the approach. Traditional mode of marketing & approach of reaching out to the end customers has no longer been effective & responsive. Need of the hour is to rethink on your marketing practices. The new formula of marketing is here! .Termed as Affiliate Marketing!! 

It is a marketing practice which unlike performance based marketing works on the fundamentals of the affiliates!! An affiliate stands for a commercial entity with a relationship with a peer or a larger entity & is rewarded for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts. In today’s high technology wave, the old conservative methods of marketing and advertising are facing narrow scope of reinvention. Among the multiple marketing opportunities that the internet presents to you, affiliate marketing programs are probably the most effective to expand the outreach ...Companies like flip kart, myntra.com, Amazon, & Google are in today’s arena, stands out for their best actionable practices in this very domain of marketing.  


This new wave of revenue sharing- paying commission for the referred business predates affiliate marketing and the internet & contributes to the inception of this new technology. The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened in November 1994, almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web. In today’s century almost majority of the companies have been relying majorly on the affiliate programs to boost their revenue margins and economy of scales.  It has constituted to the major stake of the marketing budget for any major company in today’s era of World Wide Web & 4g. This new language of marketing has grown quickly since its inception.

The e-commerce website, viewed as just another marketing tool in the early days of the Internet, has become an integrated part of the overall business plan and in majority of the cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. According to a current survey, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone. The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005. According to recent estimation, earning through affiliates worldwide amounted to US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of industry verticals sources, dealing with retail sector, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than old conservative contextual advertising programs. In today’s time, flip kart, Amazon, Google, eBay have been able to stand as the milestone in the affiliate marketing domain.

In the very early stages of its rise i.e. when this bubble was built and about to be burst, the sectors from real estate, retail sector, & other file sharing services have been the major key stake holders for the majority of the companies affiliate marketing practices. The major marketing models for this new mode of  marketing are SEO centric Model, Hit & Churn Or Churn & Burn, Relationship theme Model, Paid Traffic theme Model, Social Media model &  Multiple Pre-sell Models. While some marketing methods are solely dependent on any single model, there are some marketing methods which are dependent on multiple models. Multiple marketing models can be mingled together to achieve better results and many advanced marketers have already ventured in it.  

In the SEO based model, keyword research is completed, and pages have been optimized to rank for the particular keyword on search engines. This model has its drawbacks as it depends predominantly on the search engines for business. As its name suggests. Keyword research is done and pages are optimized to rank for particular keyword on search engines. Though you get liberal traffic from search engines, SEO is something, which doesn’t come for free. This marketing model depends a lot on search engines for business and that’s where lies its main drawback, and hence is usually been used in conjunction with Social Media centric Model.

This specific model caters to the very niche segment of the customers, who belong to the premium segment. Niche Marketing, YouTube Marketing and Content Marketing are common marketing methods based on SEO Based Marketing Model. In the Churn or Burn model, it majorly implies sending traffic, directly to the offers. It includes high investment. It comprises of very well focussed strategy and well oriented foundation for the results. Usually involves high investment. One of the common examples for churn or Burn model are bum marketing & solo ads.

Relationship model is very specific with the relationship building with the customers and getting the sales closed. It predominantly involves lot of time and investment in this specific marketing model. Paid Traffic Model is another remarkable model which is majorly dependent on the paid traffic, as its name implies. Sniper Site design, Story Telling technique and Paid Re-Targeting Ads are the most common marketing methods based on the Paid traffic model. Precision in data and data analysis are required to achieve a successful paid traffic model. PPC pay per click, PPV and Banner Media Traffic are the largely familiar, methods of Paid traffic model. PPC, PPV and Banner media traffic comprises to be the best example of the Paid traffic model.

Social Media Model: In this model customer demographics are targeted on social networks like Face Book, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn etc. With help of social networks, new offers are introduced... Results are dependent on how the marketing campaign is crafted .Face Book Marketing, Twitter Marketing, Stumble upon Marketing; Google Plus Marketing etc are the common examples. Multiple Pre-Sell: In this model of marketing a single offer is introduced several times to boost sales. Most common marketing method are based on Multiple Pre-Sell includes Sniper Site Creation, Story Telling Method and Paid Re-Targeting Ads. Any successful marketing practise is a result of well planned and oriented strategies .

The major strategies which lays the orientation for achieving a successful Affiliate marketing are: Coupons, Product Review, Boring ole Banner ads, Partner centre/ blog roll, Product feed/Aggregation & last is the Bonus model. Each model represents its own strategies and has been demarcated well according to the set of the customers and the requirements they cater to. Another imperative models for this specific marketing practise  are constituted majorly of   Coupons, direct and logical tie  affiliates; the sites offering such coupons intrinsically cater to, and draw, visitors who are in the market for a product or set of products (ideally at a discounted rate).

It’s the main goal of the companies that make these products to get as many people as possible to clip their coupons and eventually make a purchase; so they make affiliate payments to coupon sites who are able to help them accomplish this goal. Next model, is the Product Review model: these are another well recognised strategy, and these sites are intrinsically focused on providing information about products in which visitors are liable interested, the affiliate tie-in is quite  straightforward.   

There is an obvious reason of conflict of interests in the implementation of this model. The affiliate only makes money if visitors click on the affiliate links and ultimately buy the products reviewed. The other three imperative models for the affiliate marketing are the Offline model, the Blog Roll model & Product feed/Aggregation model .Each model has its own set of strategies to be focussed and the implementation.

Bottom Line: Within the realm of affiliate marketing, there are countless & limitless monetization strategies that can be executed. Many sites use varied combination or blend of the multiple methods catering to their set of clients and the segment of the market they represent.  The optimization process often involves tweaking the settings of each to find an ideal implementation for that successful blend and the ultimate result oriented approach. One of the examples of the companies following coupon strategy is from a “mommy blogger” who writes about and reviews products for parents. Note that it’s the clear disclosure of the affiliate’s relationships.

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